The former vice-president and climate champion, Al Gore, has called on Barack Obama to seize the moment and use his re-election victory to push through bold action on climate change.

The president has faced rising public pressure in the wake of superstorm Sandy to deliver on his promise to act on global warming.

But none of those calling on Obama to act carries the moral authority of Gore, who has devoted his post-political career to building a climate movement.

Now, Gore said, it is the president's turn. He urged Obama to immediately begin pushing for a carbon tax in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" budget crisis.

The vice-president's intervention for a carbon tax could give critical support to an idea that has gained currency since the election – at least among Washington thinktanks. The conservative American Enterprise Institute held an all-day seminar on the carbon tax on Tuesday.

"I think all who look at these circumstances should agree that president Obama does have a mandate, should he choose to use it, to act boldly to solve the climate crisis, to begin solving it," Gore told the Guardian in a telephone interview.

Not a bad idea. A carbon tax would be a good way of throwing cold water on the sluggisly creeping economic recovery, prolonging the crisis even longer, enabling him to deficit-spend the entity currently known as the United States into default, creating a need for a complete reconstruction of the nation. Hell, we could write a new constitution and everything -- one that acknowledges what Scyents tells us: that Man's true nature is that of a timid, worthless, rabbit-like beta-creatures who must be cared for and kept equal, and who only have value as a collective.

When Obama got re-elected, Gore probably went out to the country club, had five snifters of cognac, bloviated and blew cigar smoke in people's faces, and celebrated by getting a massagee. Then he spent days scouring all the media, wondering why nobody has mentioned him, and desperate for some attention, has "called upon" the President, like a true asshat, to pursue his ill-conceived agenda, and a highly inopportune time.

This will only serve to remind global warming zealots that Obama hasn't done shit about it, and frustrate them further as he continues to do nothing about it.

Many economists favor some form of government penalty on CO2 emissions because
of the threat of climate change. However, the steps in the argument—going from
computer simulations to a specific, numerical tax on economic activity today—are
riddled with uncertainties. Besides the theoretical difficulties, we cannot dismiss the
likelihood that politicians will rely on politics—rather than pure science—to implement the recommended programs. Rather than depending on conjectural models
and the good faith of politicians, economists should instead consider the ability of
markets to generate wealth to ease the adaptation process. Given the large uncertainties at each major step of the case for reliance on a carbon tax, economists should
reconsider their current support for such a policy.

(emphasis mine}. the free market god will save us!

Interesting, the article seems to be an economics one but makes large scientific claims. However, I don't dismiss them out of hand. He is making I think the not insane claim that models are uncertain (of course they are), but his conclusion is to let the market take care of the problem for us.

al gore truly believes that global warming will cause catastrophes across the planet... that's why he bought a 9 million dollar beachfront mansion that's just a few feet above sea level.

California isn't known for it's hurricane problem. But all those beach-front properties are still at risk of coastal erosion, particularly with a rising sea level, and the owners know it. But Gore will be long dead before his mansion is threatened._________________

juniper wrote:

you experience political reality dilation when travelling at american political speeds. it's in einstein's formulas. it's not their fault.

Free markets and greater wealth will allow us to adapt? The man is an idiot - a Koch/Exxon-funded idiot who works for the Pacific Research Institute and the Institute for Energy Research. Also frequently seen at Heartland Institute denialist conferences where he contributes pseudo-economics to their pseudo-science.

Economic activity fuelled by oil, coal and gas cannot possibly generate enough wealth to deal with its adverse impacts. Perhaps you think we can just build a few sea walls and genetically engineer a couple of new wheat varieties and everything will be fine and dandy? With a small temperature rise under two degrees centigrade, maybe we could have taken that in our stride, up to a point, but we're almost certainly on course for a much greater rise of 4+ (immediate reductions of carbon emissions of more than 5% pa would be required to avoid this). This is not something we can adapt to. The global food supply will get hammered resulting in a relentless decimation of the human population. There will be a major extinction event for life on earth as a whole - perhaps two thirds of all species and, from the fossil record, we know it can take tens of millions of years to recover from an extinction on this scale.

In the west, once food starts to become more and more expensive, people will stop spending money on other things. That locks us in to stagflation and economic depression. There won't be enough wealth generated to maintain current standards of living never mind undertake massive infrastructure projects to "adapt" to climate change.

A mouthpiece of big oil like Murphy plies his trade by emphasising uncertainties and ignoring science. If you want a business perspective, try asking an insurance industry exec what they think of that after a year of droughts, heatwaves and hurricane Sandy.

OK let's be rude to Al Gore and then there won't be any more Sandys. That oughta do it.

So the tax is effective on January 1st. How long will it take to prevent Sandys?

It won't prevent any warming-enhanced hurricanes. Not one. We're already locked in to at least a couple of degrees (centigrade) warming. If the tax is high enough to prompt an immediate reduction in carbon emissions of 5-10%, and if other countries adopt equally effective carbon-reduction measures, then we might be able to avoid the really scary stuff, ie temperature rises of 4 degrees and greater.

It's not mindless. Gore is a fucking buffoon. You, of all people, should be bashing him; he's almost single-handedly responsible for setting back the Global Warming movement about five years. You can see his impact in any graph of public sentiment on the issue. Gore flaps lips; skepticism rises. Were it not for him, the U.S. probably would have done something about it by now.

Rape-ublicans and Democrats called a momentary truce in the energy and climate wars on Tuesday, teaming up in support of windfarms and even the introduction of a carbon tax.

In a first sign of a possible shift in the landscape after Barack Obama's re-election, governors from both parties urged Congress to extend subsidies for windfarms.

The governors from Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Oregon, who included two Democrats and two Republicans, said ending the subsidies would stunt an emerging industry.

"I strongly support extension of this production tax credit so we can continue to build wind energy and the jobs and electricity that are associated with it," Kansas governor Sam Brownback said.

Investments in windfarms soared this year to $3bn with producers rushing to beat the subsidy deadline, Brownback said. "We are seeking to be the renewable state but all those numbers go to nearly zero next year," he told a conference call with reporters. "Virtually no new wind operations going in next year. That shows you just how dramatic the impact of the production tax credit is."

Meanwhile, Al Gore and speakers at a one-day forum at the conservative American Enterprise Institute discussed the adoption of a carbon tax.

Al Gore, in an interview with the Guardian, said a carbon tax would allow Obama to solve both the climate and budget crises, reducing emissions that cause global warming while raising government revenue.

Gore is a longtime supporter of a carbon tax. But a number of Republicans have also been discussing the idea, including Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina congressman who lost his seat to a Tea Party challenge, in part because of his views on climate change.

At the AEI, meanwhile, speakers discussed how a carbon tax would fit into the wider negotiations to avoid the "fiscal cliff", and how it might affect negotiations for a global climate change deal.

Supporters of a carbon tax say it is simpler than the cap and trade measures that collapsed in the Senate in 2009. It also offers Obama a "twofer", a chance to deal with the fiscal crisis and the climate crisis at a same time.

Most supporters still believe, however, that a carbon tax is a very remote possibility in the current political situation.

But there was a glimmer of hope earlier this week when the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist initially appeared to open the door to a carbon tax, telling the National Journal that it would not violate his conservative no-taxes pledge.

Norquist appeared to be backing away from that idea on Tuesday – but by that point the Obama administration was signalling it would be open to a wider deal on fiscal reform, if the Republicans were truly interested in such a tax.

"The administration has not proposed a carbon tax nor is it planning to, but if there is, as part of fiscal reform discussions, there are a lot of pieces on the table, and if Republicans see this as a viable piece, then it could be part of the mix," Gibert Metcalf, a deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy told reporters at the AEI event, according to The Hill newspaper.

Interesting, the article seems to be an economics one but makes large scientific claims. However, I don't dismiss them out of hand. He is making I think the not insane claim that models are uncertain (of course they are), but his conclusion is to let the market take care of the problem for us.

Sorry, I don't belong to that religion.

No, you appear to belong to the Church of Straw Men. Murphy didn't say anything remotely like what you are saying. What he actually said was that (a) all else being equal, future generations will be better equipped to meet environmental challenges if they have more resources available, and (b) because it is so difficult to implement good public policy, governmental efforts to avert climate change are likely to be suboptimal, perhaps significantly so, and may actually result in greater economic costs and greater environmental damage than alternative policies, including the "do nothing" policy. Can't we have an intellectually honest discussion where we don't misrepresent arguments?_________________Your argument is invalid.

All else being equal, of course. I don't see why this is controversial. If your savings were suddenly doubled, wouldn't you be better equipped to deal with adverse events? Of course you would._________________Your argument is invalid.

The best indicator of future performance is past performance. I would expect the government to do about as good a job reducing global warming as it did enabling home ownership by the lower class.

Therefore, I would expect it to result in some kind of inconceivably disastrous unintended consequences, such as the Earth bursting into a ball of fucking flame or becoming covered in flesh-eating, zombie-creating fungus or something.